CARBOHYDRATE ANALYSIS

HPIMS has been used to analyze a variety of food components, one of the most prominent being carbohydrates. Sugar analysis is huge in the food industry, and like surfactants, they can be difficult to analyze because of their sticky nature and long LC times.

Sugar libraries can be created in order to detect certain sugars within a product; in one study that looked at corn syrup components, separate peaks were identified for glucose, fructose, sucrose and maltose. In another case, fructose was identified in a jelly bean by a simple dilute-and-shoot experiment (the jelly bean was dissolved in water, diluted with methanol, and directly injected into the HPIMS instrument).

An important use of HPIMS in food analysis is for the detection of acrylamide. Acrylamide is created when starches (cereal, potato chips, and similar) are heated to high temperatures. It has been found to be somewhat carcinogenic, and more regulations are being implemented in the United States and in the UK to reduce its presence in processed food. HPIMS has proven to detect acrylamide at part per billion levels, which will continue to be imperative as its regulation increases.